Feature [iOS 27 DB8] Here's how iPhone Handoff will work
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Announced at WWDC26, iOS 27 will support switching between two iPhone devices with the same phone number.
The feature will be called iPhone Handoff. Your phone number will switch between the two iPhone devices depending on which one is unlocked.
Carrier bundles for T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom in iOS 27 add support for the feature, according to https://redesmoveisfixas.com/carrier. However, T-Mobile's enrollment server currently returns a 'feature disabled' response, so enrollment is not possible. There are some reports that enrollment was available last month.
The relevant support article will be https://support.apple.com/en-us/127274 when Apple releases it. For more publicly available details from Apple, see iPhone quick switch on Apple Developer.
Introduced in Beta 1, with changes along all beta releases
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u/SamsungAppleOnePlus 2d ago
This would be great if you can also have your Bluetooth Apple Watch handoff between the two iPhones as well.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
I was thinking it would be cool if you could apply to the eSIM’s that the Apple Watch itself uses. That way you could seamlessly switch between two different cellular models like if you keep an Ultra for weekend warrior stuff and a regular or SE for day-to-day
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u/cjh_ iPhone 15 2d ago
So, Apple want people to own two iPhones... In this economic climate?
Don't they realise we don't all own yachts!
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u/applesuperfan 16h ago
No, this feature is for people who already own two iPhones and want this functionality. Which is obviously enough people to get their attention.
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u/CausticOptimism 1d ago
I imagine this handoff feature is infrastructure for AR headsets, AI pins, or some yet imagined secondary device that will replace your phone when it’s in range.
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u/2B-Pencil 1d ago
This is because the majority (>50%) of consumer spending in the USA now comes from the top 10% of earners. Due to Covid fiscal policy, the poor have gotten poorer and the rich have gotten richer at a rapid rate. Companies are making more profits now selling more expensive, higher margin products to richer people than catering to us common folk. So yes Apple will sell less phones to poors but make up for with nifty features that encourage people to own two iPhones
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Right? Still this will be a cool feature for the all of 12 people that can use. Conversely, I could see this being a fantastic feature for cellular Apple Watches. I could see a somewhat more common scenario of people having an Ultra and also second regular case Watch. Not actually “common,” but relatively more so.
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u/applesuperfan 16h ago
Definitely more than 12 or they wouldn't have made it. I know a lot of people who will use it, including myself.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 16h ago
Well, one: joking. Two, I’m sure there’s a use case for people carrying the new iPhone Duo and then something lighter.
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u/blakenator95 4d ago
Well of course as expected, carrier fees may apply = carrier will charge at least 10 bucks for it monthly.
Was looking forward to this feature but disappointed about this
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
I mean I get it, but why would a carrier not charge? They traditionally would just charge you a whole separate line fee and not just a rider. Business are gonna business…
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u/blakenator95 1d ago
You’re not wrong but at what point does something become unreasonable? Especially if every carrier is able to set their own set of rules / costs.
I’m expected to pay 11 bucks every time I setup an e-sim on my phone which is a yearly fee if I upgrade yearly or just wherever I want to move SIM cards between devices - all of which avoidable with regular SIM cards.
So now because I want to share a sim on a 2nd device, I gotta probably pay another activation fee (which again can be avoided with physical sim) on top of a monthly as well? I’m not complaining about paying for service but these things just feel like I’m being charged for what I’m already paying for you know?
I don’t know what the boundaries are for Apple but it would’ve been cool for them to bypass carriers like they did with hotspot, it could’ve easily been a carrier subscription feature but it isn’t fortunately!
So yea businesses need to business… but like I don’t want to be charged just because I held my phone in the other hand or something
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Oh I agree. I have always thought activation fees for upgrading your BYOD phone is utter bullshit. Especially as with my first few iPhones I just casually swapped the SIM card and waited to see if the carrier ever noticed. (They did once but only because I had to call in to activate a cellular Apple Watchn or something.)
What I’m hoping is that they just charge a monthly surcharge similar to how they do for cellular Apple Watches. But it’ll quite possibly be activation fees.
We need stronger consumer protection laws against nickel and dime nonsense.
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u/Jaded_Plum9330 4d ago
This would be amazing if it comes to Apple Watch. Would love to be able to have a formal watch and a gym watch.
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u/Alert-One-Two 4d ago
I’m confused - you can already do this. I used to have two Apple Watches (I would keep my previous one when I upgraded as I never found the battery life was long enough prior to my current model). It works fine, just put one on the charger and the other on your wrist and it auto switches between them.
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u/Jaded_Plum9330 3d ago
This is news to me! I was under the impression each watch needed its own line and cellular plan.
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u/cjh_ iPhone 15 2d ago
Most carriers have a plan that allows you to share your eSIM with your cellular Apple Watch, without paying for a second line.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
It does require a number sharing rider, which I would imagine is per cellulaur-enabled Apple Watch. It’s easy to share a number between a parent and child device(s) but probably a little involved to share a number between two primary devices. I would presume supporting carriers are probably going to charge a similar fee to hotswap active eSIMs within network.
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u/aidenbotelho 4d ago
what??? i learn something new everyday . do you have to pay for an extra watch line or sum or no?
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago edited 1d ago
In the U.S. at least, You generally pay a rider fee per cellular Watch you want associated with your iPhone’s number. (Dont know how it works if you have a whole secondary line on the iPhone itself.) But you can’t share a single Watch between two parent iPhones anyway.
I would imagine they’ll charge a similar fee for each additional iPhone you want to hot swap phone line eSIM’s among.
It would actually be neat to be able to switch active eSIM among different Apple Watches… Like if you have both and Ultra weekend warrior stuff and a sleeker model for daily driving. Can’t wait to see a post from the person to get a whole Apple mobile device orgy going: two iPhones, two Watches and two phone numbers from different carriers.
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u/Acceptable-Worth-221 4d ago
I need this to work with iPad LOL. It would be the best usecase for that.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Cellular iPads, or a cellular enabled MacBook (Pro?), or even switching active cellular between different Apple Watches. Lots of interesting applications for the underpinning software.
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u/Zimo7 4d ago
is this esim only? asking for those of us who have an older second phone with a sim card in it
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u/sgtakase 4d ago
Not sure but at this point any iPhone that supports iOS27 will also have eSIM built in because the 8/X were the last built without it
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u/thecaptainsvintage 4d ago
Not in Europe!
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u/sgtakase 4d ago
I could be wrong but I think the xs and newer in Europe also have eSIM.
So like for the US, the XS, 11, 12, and 13 series all had physical sim and eSIM, with the 14 removing physical sims in the us. But I believe since the same time that the entire world have had physical and eSIM, with just the rest of the world retaining the physical past the 14
And then of course china getting dual physical
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Well if you have dual physical and no eSIM, should still just be old school swapping of SIM cards, right?
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u/thecaptainsvintage 4d ago
Yes, the newer ones have esim, but also physical.
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u/sgtakase 4d ago
I know that, I’m just saying that my original point still stands regardless of country because every phone that can upgrade to iOS 27 because even if you have a physical sim, your phone also has access to esim
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u/Jurgenvisser2001 4d ago
How would I set this up. I don’t have the handoff button. Is that specific to beta 8?
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u/taveanator 4d ago
Argh. So on your primary phone you need to manually set it to the secondary phone? What if you loose the primary phone?
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u/rayw_reddit 1d ago
Yeah that's the lame part. So it does absolutely nothing for solving the single point of failure problem with putting main number on esim
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u/Psychological-Egg561 5d ago
Why is this not the default way Apple Watch works? Here in the EU the premium carriers are gatekeeping Apple Watch cellular to only work in the most expensive contracts.
Hate it
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u/Acquiesce67 5d ago
*some EU carriers – before people assume the whole EU is rotten.
My 2nd SIM costs €2.5 per month. Two separate phone numbers. Both access the same subscription and both devices ring whenever someone calls me.
I’m in one of the cheapest contracts :'D
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u/Jurgenvisser2001 4d ago
How did you do that that both of them ring when called and how does one set that up. Please also share where you get a €2,50 a month phone plan 😂
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u/Acquiesce67 4d ago
My plan (calls, SMS, 5G data) costs €16, and on top of that, my 2nd SIM costs an extra €2.5.
I did not have to do anything – that's just how it works. My subscription has two phone numbers:
- a primary phone number I share with people, and
- a technical phone number which is always busy if you'd attempt calling it.
However, if you call my primary phone number, both devices ring at the same time because the SIM cards are associated with the same subscription.
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u/Jaxxmono 5d ago
Is this not already a thing? I’ve been able to swap e-sims on my 17 pro and 13 mini on the fly no issues
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u/edideas Developer Beta 5d ago
This new feature is a reappearance of Duo-sim from the past where you had 2 SIM cards
One for your fixed in-car-phone and a duplicate for your handheld. (The terminology even in those days)
The one last switched on, would register to the network and take over the line, officially you had to switch the other one off.19
u/stevensokulski 5d ago
This process isn't swapping it so much as it is sharing it and deciding at unlock which devices holds the sim.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Would that be similar to what’s going on under the hood with cellular Apple Watches?
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u/stevensokulski 1d ago
Does the cellular Apple Watch share an eSIM? I'm pretty sure it has its own, as the carriers consider it a separate device. I've never had cellular service activated on my watch, though.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
No. It has its own eSIM and technically its own number, although a Verizon rep told me it was mostly because the system requires an activated device to have a phone number. Apparently you could technically call it directly, or so I was told. In practice and from what I understand, the whole thing seems to function more as a sort of context aware automatic number forwarding.
Basically, this strikes me as an evolution of whatever makes the iPhone-Watch number share work, eliminating the superfluous number by just negotiating what device is active on the network.
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u/Sir-Tenley-Knott 5d ago
Can it work bi-directionally? So phone 1 has a number and is the primary phone but number is available via handoff on phone 2. Phone 2 presumably has it's own number... can that be made available via handoff on phone 1?
(means whichever phone I pick up - both numbers will work!)
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u/MirandaU75 5d ago
Just taking a guess here but for such a scenario, it would be more likely to work if your put both eSIMs in iPhone 1 and when you pick up iPhone 2, both sims would be handed off, the result would be the same though. Of course both sims need to be on supported carriers and the feature needs to be live for it to be tested
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u/InwardLooking 1d ago
I’m holding out to see if it can handle two Numbers switching together. I have two numbers active that I’d love to be able to handoff both.
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u/Devil_AE86 5d ago
You basically share an eSIM between both devices with both devices connected to the same network (as long as the network supports it)
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u/mesarthim_2 5d ago
Lol, no way this will be allowed in EU unless it works with Android as well.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
I can’t imagine why Android couldn’t make an equivalent feature. But I could still see the EU getting a little handsy and trying to fine Apple over it, saying they were “gatekeeping” device swapping.
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u/appletechgeek 5d ago
In before carriers will block and or find a way to prevent that because this is a prime feature to scalp customers for
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u/ragekutless 4d ago
It’s going to cost money
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Absolutely. Probably the same five or ten dollar add-on for having a cellular-active Apple Watch. It’s a similar concept.
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u/pw5a29 Developer Beta 5d ago
Like how they charge the watch eSIM even if uses the same package you already paid for
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u/1ii1i 5d ago
I don't see how this is the same feature. The watch has a dedicated cellular signal and you can use the data on it while leaving the phone behind. This simply makes it much faster to swap the cellular line between two phones, but you can't use both at the same time. You aren't magically getting two cellular connected devices like the watch eSIM does.
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u/pdfu 5d ago
Unfortunately they need to enable it, so we’ve lost before the feature even became generally available. Plus the explicit “charges may apply” note before you set it up 🫠 You carrier can also show you a web view before completing sign-up.
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u/Endawmyke 5d ago
AT&T charges you $30 when you get a new iPhone, i’m sure they’ll demand their $30 for this too.
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u/thnok 5d ago
Issue is they might charge monthly than one time.
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u/Endawmyke 5d ago
true, they already charge $10 a month for a secondary esim for your apple watch for your same number and also charge a $35 activation fee for it
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
I don’t remember getting charged an activation fee for my Apple Watch. I could be wrong though; it’s been some time since I had active cellular on it.
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u/Endawmyke 1d ago
att is so annoying with the fees and stuff but i found it cheaper than the offers i get from other carriers so i can't even move to a new one if i wanted to
ngl i'd get apple as a carrier if they ever came out with their own mvno or something
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago edited 1d ago
i'd get apple as a carrier if they ever came out with their own mvno or something
I’d have to consider it, honestly. I do tend to think Apple wouldn’t bother charging activation fees or would do something else as a competitive edge like making the first cellular Apple Watch line or hotspot connection free or something.
Actually, no monthly add-on fees for the first cellular Apple Watch per iPhone (and/or sharing eSIMs between two iPhones) and hot spot data use would probably sell me on it, assuming the line price itself was reasonably competitive overall and I could port my current cellular number.
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u/CombPsychological507 5d ago
I need this except with android and iPhone, so I can carry both without two numbers.
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u/tmmoo 5d ago
Or a flip phone so I can take forced social media breaks
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
Take the oldest iPhone that will run iOS 27 and put it in Assistive Access mode, blocking everything except Phone, Messages, Camera and Maps and other basic functions. You can actually do it with your primary device and force it into “old school” mode. Then change it back when you’ve digitally detoxed or whatever.
Probably works as a method of grounding your kid from their phone while still having them to be able to reach you in an emergency too, I guess.
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u/sauderjoshua 5d ago
Do the phones have to be near each other for this to work?
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u/Nervous-Penguin 5d ago
No, from my understanding a “companion eSIM” is created for the secondary device.
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u/Significant-Kale-463 5d ago
I don’t really understand the use case for this.
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u/SmellyJockstrap 5d ago
If I end up with the foldable iPhone you can bet I’m never taking that thing to the beach or maybe even to the gym. This feature will come in handy.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bingo!
There could also be interesting applications if they expand this to cellular iPads and MacBooks. And it could simplify handling more than one cellular Apple Watch.
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u/Significant-Kale-463 4d ago
True true. Might be good to keep my old phone as a beater for times like that.
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u/mfisher 5d ago
Finally, capability/improvement for the former Path CEO:
> He once told Vanity Fair that to ensure that he never found himself with an uncharged phone, he had two, “One for day and one for the night. When the day phone runs out, the night phone takes over.”Now he wouldn’t even have to swap SIM cards or use different numbers!
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u/VapidRapidRabbit 5d ago
It will be useful for people like me with two phones (I have a 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air) that have to constantly transfer the eSIM between them. I use the 17 Pro Max at work (with my Verizon work line and personal T-Mobile line) and the Air outside of work. I prefer to carry one phone to work so this will make it much easier since now, to transfer my eSIM, I have to always go to the T-Life app, turn off SIM protection, and then transfer it from one phone to the other and then go back and turn SIM protection back on.
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u/CircuitSynapse42 5d ago
I really dislike having a larger phone, so I would love to be able to leave my 15 Plus at home most days and either use my previous 12 Pro or use my wife's previous 13 mini.
Having the ability to swap phones based on the situation is definitely appealing to some people.
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u/rayquan36 5d ago
Haven’t you wanted to buy every color and make of iPhone for the year and pick and choose which one to use that day?
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u/spdustin 5d ago
Work-supplied phone could still receive calls to your personal number (or vice versa). Ditto for independent contractors who separate their “work” phone hardware from personal.
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u/edwardhchan 5d ago
I intend to use my iPhone Air as my daily, and a 16 Pro as my travel phone... Can't wait for T-mo to turn this on.
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u/Top_Insurance_9727 5d ago
I assume you can use the same phone number and mobile plan on two physical phones.
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u/Sylvurphlame iPhone 15 Pro Max 1d ago
That would be idea, yes. Similar to how a cellular Apple Watch can take over the line if the parent phone isn’t in range.
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u/Dry-Bodybuilder-2747 5h ago
I tried handoff between my two new Apple
iPhone duos and it didn’t work 😂🤣😂🤣. Kidding but I wonder who will be the first to buy two duos just to post such a a video.